


and they won't believe it when they see it

by irrelevant



Category: Star Trek RPF, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Bill Shatner Writes Fanfic, Green Orion Slave Girls, How does that Vulcan salute go?, I can't believe I actually wrote this, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-22
Updated: 2010-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-09 15:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrelevant/pseuds/irrelevant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What else do you call someone who dictates glorified Star Trek fanfiction to ghostwriters?</p>
            </blockquote>





	and they won't believe it when they see it

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by _The Return_ et al, and _Get a Life_. I… really can't believe I wrote this. Really. *drops fic and runs like hell*

Bill Shatner is a Trekkie.

Or a Trekker, Leonard doesn't keep abreast of fan nomenclature, but Trekker or Trekkie, that's what Bill is, and Leonard is calling him on it.

"You're a Trekkie," he interrupts into the rambling monologue Bill fondly believes is a conversation, and Bill breaks off explaining why it makes perfect sense for the Borg and the Romulans to join up and resurrect Jim Kirk as a weapon against the Federation and focuses on Leonard long enough to say, "No I'm not. And it's Trekker, not Trekkie."

Leonard points at him. "There, you see? If you weren't, you wouldn't know that. I wasn't sure."

"You've done the convention circuit longer than I have. You know how easy it is to pick this stuff up."

"No I don't."

"Yes, you do."

"Are you telling me how my memory works? Because that's what it sounds like you're doing."

"You called me a Trekkie," Bill says, as though that explains everything. And since this is Shatner-land and Captain Kirk is not dead, maybe it does.

\--

"I believe it's called fanfiction," says Leonard.

"Fan _novels_," Bill corrects with a dismissive wave of the hand holding his fork. "There is a difference."

Which is news to Leonard and several million Star Trek fans. "Bill," he says patiently, "if bringing the character you played off and on for thirty years back from the dead via weird alien science then hooking him up with a gal named Teilani isn't fanfiction, maybe you'd better explain to me what is."

"What's wrong with Teilani?" Nobody does affronted better than Bill. "It's a nice name. Pretty. Exotic."

"For a certain kind of dancer," Leonard mutters.

"I knew a dancer named Leilani, once," Bill says thoughtfully.

"I'm not having this conversation again." Leonard catches their waiter's eye and taps his glass. "Same, please."

Club soda isn't scotch on the rocks, but when you're listening to Bill expound on Women He Has Known it's nice to be able to pretend.

\--

"You want to what?" Leonard says into his phone. He rolls up onto his elbow and checks the clock on the nightstand. "Bill, it's goddamn midnight."

There's background rustling and static coming through over the line, but he still hears Bill say, "I know it is. Why? Are you asleep?"

"I was asleep," Leonard says, "but now I'm talking to you. Why am I talking to you?"

"Because George doesn't want to and he's the only person I know here besides you and the coordinators, and I don't want to talk them. These people, they're crazy, Leonard. And weirdly fascinating at the same time. They scare the hell out of me."

Holding the phone to his ear, Leonard flops onto his back and stares at the ceiling. "I have an eight o'clock flight tomorrow. I told you that, right?"

"And I've got an eight fifteen. So what?"

"So we're not forty anymore. We're staring seventy in the face."

"Speak for yourself. I'm just hitting my stride."

"Says the man who is four days older than I am."

"Leonard."

He sighs and drops his arm across his eyes. "Yes, Bill."

"I already checked out."

God, that's so Bill.

"You've got two beds, don't you? They always give me two queens when I ask for a large king. I can sack out on one of them."

Obviously, Leonard thinks, he's not getting out of this. "When I tell you to shut up, you shut up, or no deal."

"Fine."

"Fine. Where are you?"

"I'm, uh, in the hall. Two-twenty-three, right?"

Leonard's right temple throbs as he sits the rest of the way up. "How did you get my room number?"

"Leonard, look—"

"You know, I don't think I want to know," he interrupts, and disconnects. He lies back down and rolls onto his side. Ten seconds later, Bill starts pounding on the door.

"Leonard? Leonard, are you okay in there? Len?"

_I am not getting up, not getting up, I am not—_

"Leonard! If you don't answer I'm calling 911!"

He would, too.

Gritting his teeth, Leonard rolls out of bed and stumbles through his darkened room to the door. He flips the deadbolt, jerks the door open, and before Bill can say anything he grabs him and yanks him inside. "You're a pain in the ass, Shatner," he grumbles. "Bathroom there, bed there. I'm going back to sleep."

Bill grabs his arm and stares at him out of wide, wide-awake eyes. "You said you were going to talk to me."

"No, you said that."

"Then I'll talk and you can listen. Okay?"

Leonard doesn't answer. He's yawning. But he nods because he knows that if he doesn't acknowledge the inquiry, Bill will keep at him until he gets a yes. He nods because Bill will now assume he's listening and let him crawl back into bed, and even though there's a lamp on beside the bed that will hopefully soon contain a non-speaking Bill Shatner, Leonard has slept through worse than one lousy hotel light and Bill's voice.

"—done this before but it was—it was different, although I can't tell you how. But that's why I came to this one, and—"

The rush of running water drowns whatever Bill intends to say; he must be brushing his teeth. Leonard crawls back under his blankets, stretching out on his too-firm mattress in relief so intense it's almost sexual. There's more splashing from the bathroom, and Bill walks out, scrubbing his face with a hand towel.

"So next time, I'm going to get out there and see what it's really like," he says. Leonard wakes himself up a little, because the last time he took one of Bill's monologues for granted, he ended up spending four days backpacking in the Ozarks with Bill, Bill's girlfriend, and a lot of chiggers and mosquitoes for company.

"What what's really like?" he asks ungrammatically. Bill gives him a disbelieving look, forgetting that he's been conversing with the sink.

"Conventions," Bill says, and Leonard realizes that things are worse than he thought.

"You can't go wandering around a sci-fi con without some kind of protection," he protests. "They'll eat you alive."

Bill's mouth is open before Leonard finishes speaking, but something Leonard says apparently strikes a chord because he closes his mouth, blinks, and opens it again. "Protection," he says, like he's trying the concept on for size.

It occurs to Leonard how literal the 'trying on' could become. He rolls over onto his stomach and pulls a pillow over his head. "Go to sleep, Bill."

"No, wait, this is good idea. Leonard! After all these years your brain finally started working. It's my influence, isn't it? It has to—"

"Bill."

"What?"

"Shut up."

\--

"Where the hell is my shirt?"

"How should I know?"

"I left it lying on the bed before I got in the shower. I was in the bathroom maybe fifteen minutes, and now it's gone." Hands on hips, Leonard stands over his temporary roommate, who's currently digging through his own luggage. "Damn it, Bill, what did you do, eat it?"

"Well, I'm hungry enough, Leonard, but no, I didn't eat your shirt. I'm looking for something, go away." He flaps his hand in a shooing motion and Leonard reaches for some vestige of Spock's patience. Unfortunately, Leonard Nimoy's impatience sometimes exceeds Spock's Vulcan grasp.

"I can't go away until I find my shirt, and whose bright idea was that?" Leonard (not Spock) snarls. "Oh that's right, it was yours. 'We're both going so we might as well go together, Leonard,' you said. 'We should share a room, Leonard, get the full con experience,' you said. And now I can't find my fucking shirt!"

"Maybe you only think you brought it. Maybe you're getting senile. I thought I told you to stop getting older." Bill tosses a handful of underwear over his shoulder. It smacks Leonard in the abdomen and drops to the floor.

"I am not," Leonard says, "senile. I am also not imagining my shirt. It's dark blue. It has long sleeves and dark blue buttons down the front, and I've had it for three years. I know this shirt, Bill. I have an intimate relationship with this shirt. I _like_ this shirt, and if I don't find it within the next few minutes I'm going to be very unhappy."

Bill stops his manic rooting and looks up. "You must have brought more than one."

"Of course I did, but there's no reason for me to wear another one, since there's no reason for this one to be gone."

"Well, just—" more hand-waving "—remember harder or something. I'm doing important things, here."

"Such as…" Leonard says, but he's not really interested in the answer. He checks the closet one more time, pulls the sheets fully off the bed, shaking them out one by one and hoping to see his shirt float free. No such luck. Bill is still yammering in the background.

"—telling you, they'll tell you anything if you're wearing the right camouflage, and I mean anything, up to and including what either of us had for dinner last night on the plane."

By this point Leonard is only half listening, mentally trying to retrace the path of the shirt. "What did we have for dinner?"

"We didn't, but forget that. What do you think of this?"

He starts to turn, starts to say, "What do I think about what?" and then he _sees_ what and the word turns into, "Wha-ha-ha-hahahahahaaaaa…" Sort of a cross between a goat and horse, and not very attractive, but neither is Bill's mask.

"This one's yours," Bill says from behind what appears to be several pounds of repulsive latex. He's holding something out that looks even more repulsive.

"No," Leonard says.

"Yes!" Bill exclaims.

Leonard reaches out and gets a grip on Bill's mask, and pulls. Hard.

"Ow!"

He drops the mask on his denuded bed, wrestles the other mask out of Bill's hands and tosses it down, too. "No."

"Fine." Yes, that's a pout. "If you don't want to come, you don't. I'll go by myself."

"Bill..."

"No, I mean it." And now it's Captain Kirk's noble, persecuted face on display. "This is important to me, Leonard."

"The back of the door," Leonard says, turns, and walks back into the bathroom. There his shirt is, hanging from the hook on the back of the door. Damn. Maybe he is getting senile.

"We'll do the dealers room after the last Q and A session," Bill calls from the other room. "Don't worry, I've got this all figured out."

Leonard grabs the shirt off the door, unbuttons it and pulls it on. "Yeah," he says under his breath, his fingers fumbling over the buttons. "That's what I'm afraid of."

\--

They are sitting in Leonard's back yard. It's not summer anymore but it's not really autumn yet, either; the air smells like the leaves Leonard's gardener hasn't gotten around to blowing away, and somebody's outdoor grill. Leonard has just closed his eyes. He's resting them, enjoying a few minutes of silence while Bill thinks up a new topic.

Well, seconds of silence is probably more accurate.

"You know, you might be right about the Trekker thing," Bill says.

Leonard thinks _please let this not be what I think it is_ and opens his eyes. Bill is staring intently at him. "The masks work," he tells Leonard, "they serve their purpose. But I think I'm ready to move on."

Yes, and the thought of what moving on might entail scares the hell out of Leonard. "Why don't you write a book?" he suggests, because that's Bill's latest thing to do when he gets an idea he feels the world at large should share. He (with the help of at least one other person) writes a book about it.

"Oh, I will," Bill says, grinning. "This is research." He pauses, and Leonard can almost see the lightbulb go on over his head. "Not just a book about fans, though, this could be for my next novel."

Bill reaches out without looking and grabs Leonard's arm, shakes it a little. "Maybe in another universe—remember the mirror, Len?—maybe there's a Kirk in another universe who failed the Academy—no wait, he didn't fail, somebody framed him for something and he got booted and became, I don't know—no, I do know. A pirate!" He shakes Leonard's arm again for emphasis, "But that's not the point."

Leonard is lost, not an unusual situation when he's been listening to Bill for any length of time. "What is the point?"

Bill stares at him like he's dropped more than the conversational thread. "Costumes, Leonard. You know how these con people build their own outfits? Last time out, I met some amazing Klingons. I mean, they looked like the real thing. And the Borg! I'm not saying we should make our own, but if you think about it, costumes are just the next step in a logical progression for in-character research." His eyes are shining as he says it.

Leonard is groping through the morass of Bill's anti-logic in search of a thread of sanity. "And this logical progression is why you think we should go to a Star Trek convention dressed as the Borg."

"No, this is why I think you should go as a green Orion slave girl and I should go as your handler, who is also Kirk," Bill says.

He should have strangled Bill for real all those years ago. Sixty-five and the man still doesn't know when to say when. He's also still running his mouth, oblivious as usual.

"I'll be Kirk, but not Kirk the way he was in the series. _Damaged_ Kirk."

And well, that's it. Enough. Leonard says something—Bill's name, he thinks—but it comes out a shout that sounds somehow wrong, and suddenly Bill-free airspace abounds.

Susan has the stereo on, Bach, and the dark, rich sound comes distant but clear through the open windows of Leonard's house. There's a mourning dove in the ash tree, cooing an odd counterpoint; Leonard knows this because he finally has enough quiet to hear it in.

Bill's eyes seem twice as large as normal, which is something to see. "You just called me Jim."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes you did."

Leonard pushes his glasses to the top of his head and rubs the bridge of his nose. "Come over here," he says, and he crooks his finger and leans forward and, eyes still wide, Bill leans into him.

They touch all the time. Sometimes it's deliberate, for show, and sometimes it's just them being them. Being easy together, because they are. But when it's just them, not them in front of an audience, touching is Leonard's arm bumping Bill's, hips sometimes, casual nudges and Bill grabbing Leonard's wrist because he's Bill and Bill is excited about life in general, and that's just how he shows it.

This touching is different. Is Leonard reaching, catching Bill's face in his hands and tilting Bill's head forward until their foreheads are pressed together. Is the gust of Bill's breath over Leonard's chin.

"Bill?"

"Yes."

Why are we whispering, Leonard wonders. "I'm going to tell you something," he says, raising his voice slightly, "and you're going to listen, and when I'm finished you're going to nod your head."

"But—"

"_Listen_." He tightens his fingers, just a little. He wonders if this is how it was for Spock back on that Native American planet, trying to make his stubborn ass of a captain remember himself. He feels Bill's hands wrap loosely around his wrists.

"We are not going to a convention as the Borg," Leonard tells the ground and Bill's nose. "We're definitely not going as an Orion slave girl and pirate Kirk. Understand?"

Bill's mouth opens, Leonard feels the shift of his jaw beneath his hands and says, "Don't say it. Nod." And for once, Bill closes his mouth and does as he's told.

Not only what he's told, though, because while he's nodding he turns his head just enough that his chin grazes Leonard's mouth. In passing at first, but then he leans back and everything lines up right, Leonard's bottom lip fitting the seam of Bill's mouth. Leonard thinks he feels Bill smile, then Bill's lips part, settling with certainty against his, and Leonard isn't certain of anything anymore.

Like coffee, only Bill's been drinking Calistoga. His mouth still manages to taste like dark roast, real and bitter and familiar even though they've never done this before—Leonard doesn't know why they're doing it now. He doesn't know what to do with that familiarity but push it away.

He holds Bill separate from him, hands still cupping Bill's face, and Bill looks at him across the small space between them; for once, Leonard can't define Bill's expression.

Not anger or disappointment. Not regret. At least he doesn't think so.

"Are you two trying a mind meld again?" Susan's voice calls from the direction of the house, and Leonard lets go of Bill by slow, careful degrees.

He waves to Susan as he settles back into his chair, thinking that it doesn't matter if she witnessed the entirety of the last few minutes. She'll just write the whole episode off as Bill being Bill, a (mostly) harmless brand of native insanity, and Leonard's not certain she won't be right. It occurs to him, not for the first time, that Bill Shatner may be the only person who will ever truly understand the seeming random impulses that govern Bill Shatner's actions. He doubts even Bill understands his own motivations half the time.

He glances at him, trying to get a visual handle on him, but Bill's unnamable expression is gone; now he just looks stupefied. Then again, Bill often looks stupefied even when he isn't. Susan is walking towards them, grinning.

"I could have told you it wouldn't work. Neither of you has enough left up here to make it happen." She taps her left temple and laughs, and Leonard smiles up at her.

"The sad thing is, you're probably right."

She scruffs a hand through his hair then leans past him, holding a mobile phone out to Bill. "You left it on the counter," she says. "It's been making noise off and on for the last half hour or so. I thought you'd want to know."

Bill stares blankly at the phone now in his hand. "Oh," he says, "okay." And, "Yes." And, "Thanks."

"Do you want refills?" Susan asks. "Speak now or forever hold your peace. I'm shutting the door to my office and I'm warning you now, I'm not coming out for anything less than an act of God."

Leonard laughs; Bill pokes at his phone and says things like, "Why isn't it this one? I thought I was supposed to press this one. Damn it, the guy at the shop said this model was easy."

Susan shakes her head at both of them and starts backing away. "Last chance," she says.

Leonard waves her off. "If we need anything we'll get it ourselves. We're big boys." He glances at Bill. "Some of us are bigger than others."

"My best friend," Bill says without looking up. "Why do I need Jimmy for abuse? I've got you. Okay, there it goes." He raises the phone to his ear and stands up, frowning at Leonard the whole time.

"Don't move," he says, "I'm not finished with you." His eyes focus on something beyond Leonard's left shoulder and he says, "Who's dead? Or dying? No, I can't think of another reason you'd call me five times in an hour," and walks off.

Leonard allows himself to slouch down into his chair, and gradually, Bill becomes background noise, along with Susan's Bach and the mourning dove. The staccato of Bill's voice is almost soothing now that he's far enough away that Leonard can't understand what he's saying. From the few sentences he does catch, he gathers Bill is talking to one of his daughters. Strange how something so mundane follows naturally on the heels of the surreal.

_Bill kissed me._

Leonard isn't sure how to feel about that, or about the fact that Bill evidently thinks he'd make a great Orion slave girl, for that matter. But if he did know, he's almost certain he'd categorize the incident as being, well, fascinating.

Feeling oddly bemused, he finishes his cranberry juice and watches Bill pace an elliptical (he's Spock, give him some credit) circuit around the yard, flapping the hand not holding the phone like a duck with one wing. Leonard wonders, just for curiosity's sake, if he can still fit into his old blue and black uniform. He thinks about Bill not being finished with him and wonders if he should start worrying now while the future is still a comforting blank, or later when reality is getting ready to smite him with its unpredictable fist, otherwise known as Bill's brain.

What the hell does a green Orion slave girl wear, anyway?


End file.
